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Friday, April 17, 2009

A great new series of articles and investigations from T. Christian Miller, author of Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq with Los Angeles Times, ProPublica and ABC News, on the failure of the Defense Base Act to provide care for injured contractors after they return from Iraq.

Civilian contractors died like soldiers. They were injured like soldiers. But back home, the U.S. government consigned the wounded and their families to a private insurance system that shunted them to substandard treatment and delayed their care as they suffered from devastating injuries, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, ABC News and ProPublica has found.

Civilian workers who suffered devastating injuries while supporting the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home to a grinding battle for basic medical care, artificial limbs, psychological counseling and other services.

Insurance giant AIG, the same company that rewarded its executives with millions in bonuses and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a spa retreat at an exclusive California resort and private jets, has been nickel and diming employees of private contractors injured in Iraq, with a pattern of denying and delaying their claims, a joint investigation between 20/20, the Los Angeles Times and the non-profit group ProPublica has found.

Kirk von Ackermann

Missing In Iraq

Ryan G. Manelick

On December 14, 2003, his colleague, Ryan Manelick (right) was gunned down shortly after leaving Camp Anaconda also near Balad, Iraq. Both worked for the same contractor, Ultra Services of Istanbul, Turkey.